Vehicle hood latch systems are well known in the art. Typically, a vehicle hood or trunk deck will have a latch for engaging and cinching onto a striker. The latch will have a rotatably mounted ratchet engaging a pawl in a ratchet relation. The ratchet cooperates with a mouth of the housing to pivot between an open and closed condition for receiving, engaging and cinching a keeper of a striker. The pawl retains the ratchet in the closed and cinched conditions.
Hood latches are required to have a secondary latching mechanism and a primary latching mechanism. The primary latching mechanism is operably from inside the vehicle, normally under the dashboard. A secondary latching is only operable from the outside.
It is known to provide a release lever on the secondary latching mechanism which is presented only upon the release of the primary latch. Examples of such latch mechanism are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,961601; 4,991,884; 5,000,493 and 5,141,265. In these latch mechanisms, the secondary latching mechanism is separate from the primary latching mechanism, requiring additional components and labor for assembly.
In many cases, the location of the arm is difficult to find requiring the operator to probe blindly or bend over to look for the arm. Since the exact location of the handle varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, there exists a need to provide a secondary release lever which is readily accessible and visible to the operator when the hood latch is in the secondary position.